Week 7, July 31 - August 6

This week was somewhat calmer than the last two. My supervisor, Peggy went on vacation. Even though I was somewhat on my own, I was given several assignments that more than occupied my time. The highlights this week were a conversation with Rick Valdez, who's Peggy’s supervisor, my visit to Siggraph at the Boston Convention Center, and a visit to Maine to see my brother and his family. I also found out B of A is a not how employees are supposed to refer to the bank (and especially not bofa).

SIGGRAPH2006

SIGGRAPH2006 was the 31st International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques. This year it was in Boston (next summer it will be in San Diego). It's put on by AMC SIGGRAPH, which stands for "The Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques." A real mouthful. I’m a card carrying member of AMC SIGGRAPH.

Holding the event in Boston allowed easier participation by Boston’s tech community, especially MIT’s renowned Media Lab. There were also more European companies in attendance than usual. This put the focus more on research and less on Hollywood.

I was able to attend Sunday afternoon and Monday after work. My general impression was what’s coming in media is much more intuitively interactive and able to mimic and alter reality at a high level. Also, everything is on a convergence course with things like cell phones, ipods, televisions, home appliances, cars, and even clothing. I also found out our EdTec program is keeping up with the cutting edge by teaching things as how to use ipods, gaming and GPS in education. SecondLife, a role-playing game platform we used in the gaming class, and GoogleEarth, use in the GPS/Geotools class, both had impressive booths. One of the keynote speeches was given by John Lassiter of Pixar/Disney – via ipod video.

Speaking of cloth, I saw a presentation by Autodesk, a company that creates 3D modeling and animation software, of an amazing breakthrough in how to digitally reproduce the effects of cloth. They were never been able to accurately reproduce this before. The writing of the algorhythms took years of research. They demonstrated it by showing how they could adjust the movements of a dress on a dancing model. When the 3D model stopped dancing the dress she wore kept moving due to their momentum just as it would in real life. By altering the properties of this digital cloth they were able to get even more unexpected effects. For instance the "cloth" could accurately reproduce ocean waves and incredibly realistic skin, complete with effects that mimic how skin can hang down a little and wobble as someone moves.

Another clothing related breakthrough was a fiber-optic thread that could be woven into cloth. They showed how this could be used to make clothes that became computer displays or even a kind of wearable computer. Talk about wearing your emoticons on your sleeve!

Much of what I saw was controlled interactively by touch. For instance there was a screen similar to the one used in the movie "Minority Report" that eliminated the need for typing. You simply touched and pointed to operate the computer.

What does this mean for Educational Technology? It’s hard to predict but certainly it provides exciting channels for learning and makes digital multimedia assessable practically anywhere at any time by ever smaller devices. A lot of people in EdTec are also hoping for the day they can get rid of their keyboards and use speech, touch, or even thought, to enter and manipulate information. It’s also a challenge for educators to stay abreast of the latest and greatest technology. If they don't they risk being irrelevant. This creates more work for instructional designers. The other challenge is to not be so wowed by the technology that well-thought-out courses take a back seat to doing cool stuff. The good news is that many of the advances make technology more user friendly than ever.

Conversation with Rick Valdez

Rick Valdez is from Utah. He did undergraduate work at BYU in psychology, but became interested in practical applications for the psych theories. He heard about the Instructional Technology program at Utah State headed by Dave Merrill and made the switch. He considered it to be applied psychology – a chance to apply cognitive and behavioral science to learning.

In graduate school he worked for a research group that created an early version of an online authoring system. This experience led to a job with a company that was making laser disk training for the Air Force, an early version of interactive e-learning.

In fact, his career has followed the arc of development in interactive technology. First it was slides stored in carosel viewing machines, then laser disks, CD Roms, and now the Web. In each case a technology with a high capacity was replaced by one with an initially lower capacity because the new method was more convenient and cost effective. However, the amount of information that the new technology could convey always soon exceeded the old technology.

Rick and Allison Rosset’s paths crossed when he used to work for Click to Learn. They met at a conference and he asked to come on campus to do some recruiting. He sat in on one of her classes and was very impressed with her and our program. He’d like to renew his connection with EdTech at SDSU. He feels it’s one of the top three programs in the country, especially now that Dave Merrill is no longer with Utah State.

Their first meeting was also a little embarassing for him. His company was demonstrating a new technology at the conference. An interactive computer character that could give verbal responses to scripted questions. At the conference there was a glitch and the computer character either gave the wrong response or didn't respond at all. Allison kept ribbing him about this when they ended up sitting next to each other at the conference.

Rick has developed a couple instructional design theories of his own. One he calls Reusable Learning Architecture, or RLA. His idea is that Reusable Learning Object work best if combined with RLAs. In other words RLOs, the Legos of learning, should be contained within a repeatable structure, meaning that courses will use a similar look and feel. This helps reduce development time dramatically, while providing the learner with a familiar learning environment that allows them to focus more on content and less on delivery method. We are instituting this at the bank by archiving our classes and creating a number of templates that can be adapted for nearly any use. He's also working on another theory. It is a learning approach that's a kind of corporate version of Project Based Learning, that takes a holistic approach to how people learn. He's published a white paper about it, but it's still a work in progress.

I told him I recently heard that the bank doesn't like to be referred to as B of A. BAC is preferred. He said he used to make the same mistake when he was with Click to Learn, but instead they were calling the bank bofa (pronounced bow-fah). He found out it was frown upon when his company helped produce some cutting edge training for BAC, that ended up being abandoned. He then told me the story and said it's a case study that illustrated the importance of not using technology for the sake of using technology and the importance of doing solid analysis before creating training.

One of the learning managers at the bank was given a blank check to create world-class training for bank tellers. She decided to create a virtual environment where the employees could see a 3D computer representation of a teller station and interact with it. Included was going to be special gloves the future tellers could wear to count virtual money. One of the things this project required was the purchase of very expensive computers that could only be used for the training. It cost $1 million for the computers alone and they would no other use. This set off alarm bells in Rick's mind. Another thing was the special gloves for counting virtual money. You never touched real money, and money counting requires physical touch, not simply counting techniques. Rick said, "You always train to the required skill." Why buy special computers when the tellers had to be able to count real money anyway? Wouldn't real cash or a facsimile be more effective and less costly? In the end the "black check" wasn't really a blank check and a bank official nixed everything.

The company that was making the virtual teller environment was located in Sweden. Rick got a nice trip to Stockholm an was able to learn a lot about virtual worlds, before the plug was pulled. Plus he had a good lesson in the importance of doing proper analysis before going on a spending spree creating an educational product.

Personal Notes

I had another wonderful weekend at the Kennebunkport home of my brother’s parents-in-law. This time I rode the train up. It was stress-free compared with fighting the weekend traffic. I wish trains were more convenient to use in San Diego.

We spent Sunday morning on a sailboat off the Maine coast. We saw Bush the Elder motor past in his high-powered cigarette boat, similar to the ones used in Miami Vice. His secret service detail could barley keep up. They even let me operate the tiller for a while.

My brother and I haven’t been very close over the years. This was a chance to renew our ties and become like brothers again. I applied the BAC spirit of reaching out to make the effort to contact and visit them. In a personal sense this is the most valuable thing I’ve learned this summer.